Kadish
Yehouda Chaki, 2008, Oil on canvas
The Kaddish is a hymn sung during Jewish services to magnify and glorify the name of God. Here, in this layered and ironic painting, Chaki freights the Kaddish with sinister undertones. The cacophony of faces – anguished, proud, smug, confused, self-assured – posed amidst imagery of war and violence reflects the often twisted and complicated ways in which we claim praise of the divine. The painter sings a postmodern Mourner’s Kaddish.